Recently I had the interesting opportunity to revise something that was originally written by our head communications person. He and I have chatted over the last few weeks about the whole field of writing and I had the opportunity to see the style guide that he created for his previous employer. For those not in the know, a style guide is commonly used in a business to help provide a cohesive look to the written documents. It contains items such as when acronyms should and should not be used, the use of contractions, what font, etc. The one he wrote was amazing. From the few style guides that I've seen, I've never learned anything from them but his was almost a mini grammar lesson.
The reason how I knew he originally wrote the document that I had to edit was because of the use of the em dash. I've never used one in my life and when it came to editing this, I actually Googled it to see what exactly it was, when it was used, etc. The em dash is used in places where a parenthesis and perhaps even a comma could be used. I asked Canada Guy #1 his thoughts of the em dash since he is a newspaper editor. His take is that a dash of any length (hyphen, en dash or em dash) should be used only when absolutely necessary and if it's a parenthetical comment, why not use the parenthesis? My thoughts exactly or even better, how about just rephrasing the sentence?
I ended up keeping the em dash in and actually included another em dash comment to the revised piece. I even used it in yesterday's entry (technically it was a hyphen because I was too lazy to look up what the HTML code was for an em dash but it still looks and acts the same).
I think I have a new love and his name is em dash.
7 comments:
How cute is it that you are so vastly amused by the dash?
I think this is the first post of yours that I've read and truly have no understanding of what it was you are referring too. But like several past posts, I'm pretty sure this falls into the catagory of "I really don't want to know".
Isn't a style guide a bit anal?
So I now have to use more dashes along with maintaining a healthy number of semi-colons in order to keep you reading my blog?
As for a style guide, why not use Chicago's? It's nice and thick and when I really have a question, I pull it off the shelves. The rest of the time, it sits, slowly bending my shelves with it's weight.
Thanks, Jay. I do have my moments (despite what Sage may have told you). :-)
Ed - An engineer calling a writer anal?!? This is sort of like that pot/kettle saying, isn't it? ;-)
Sage - It basically is Chicago's but it just picked apart to apply only to whatever the business writes..or in some cases, the higher ups that have no idea what the Chicago Manual of Style is. They just want it like they want it.
You know, the fact that you own a copy is kinda hot. ;-)
"..or in some cases, the higher ups that have no idea what the Chicago Manual of Style is."
That includes me. I've never been a higher up before. Why does Chicago have dibs on stye?
Lately, I prefer the em dash to parentheticals. Although I had to wiki em dash to see what it was. I think I might even overuse the em dash.
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